Mr Piper described previous government agency attempts to survey and protect the wildcat as "half-hearted".

He said the animal was a unique predator that had been resident in Britain for at least two million years, sharing space with everything from woolly mammoths to cave lions and surviving entire ice ages.

But he said more recently it had "fallen foul" of persecution, urban development and, increasingly, hybridisation with domestic feral cats.

The film-maker appealed to farmers and owners of shooting estates to help protect the species.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8026731.stm